Alicia’s Market Reopened Its Original Counter and Is Back to Half Its Pre-Fire Size
More OG comfort foods have returned to the 78-year-old Kalihi store—and there’s a new poke sampler box.
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
A few days into the new year, I stop by Alicia’s Market and discover that it recently expanded back into about half of the original store. That means you no longer stand just inside the door to order the basics. Now there are more local food favorites as well as Alicia’s Hawaiian plates and signature bowls of roast meat and poke. More OG comfort food is back, including turkey tails, char siu-style or roasted. New items include musubi, weekend specials on fresh ‘ahi, and a poke sampler for those who can’t decide.
“We brought back our dried aku. We brought back the crack seed. We do roast duck on Saturdays,” Chris Kam, the third generation to steer the family business, says as he scoops rice. “Now, we can do whole suckling pigs again. And we’re doing catering again, so people can order noodles.”
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Alicia’s Market sells 50 to 70 pounds of its signature roast pork on an average day, about half of what it sold before a devastating fire in 2018 destroyed the kitchen. In the aftermath, Alicia’s moved to a tiny space in the same building and weathered the pandemic with a minimal menu of mainly poke and some roast meats. In late 2022, it returned to a slice of the original store, offering a slightly expanded menu from a counter just inside the door with a line that snaked out the door.
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
Now, customers can head toward the back of the store again to order poke, plates, bowls and sides, then browse snacks, local beer and other drinks while they wait. Snacks include three styles of peanuts—boiled, roasted and dry boiled ($5 a pound), the last retaining the five-spice flavor of boiled peanuts with a texture that Kam describes as “crispy chewy.”
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
Popular poke choices in the glass case are still the spicy ‘ahi ($19.95 a pound) and wasabi masago ‘ahi ($20.95 a pound), a creation of Kam’s dad, Leonard Kam. There’s the clean simplicity of the fresh ‘ahi green onion poke. A new poke sampler ($33.95) in a sectioned cardboard box holds six distinct flavors: wasabi masago ‘ahi, sweet onion tako, ponzu salmon, sweet onion shoyu ‘ahi, spicy ‘ahi and abalone squid.
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
Kam recently clinched a steady supply of warabi to make a salad that highlights the delicate fern shoots with slivers of kamaboko and bits of bonito and glass noodles. Unlike the more common tomato-onion version of the salad, the flavor of this one is light and savory.
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
The crack seed jars are still there, but now hold small bags of the snacks so people “don’t have to wait for somebody to open the jar and pack it for them,” Chris Kam says.
Photo: Robbie Dingeman
As we wait for our meat and poke to get boxed up, a grinning Leonard Kam emerges from the kitchen holding up the roast duck special. Working the register near the door is Chris’s brother, Brad Kam. Next to the checkout, the house-made pork hash ($7.95 for 6) usually sells out by noon. The brothers’ mom, Gerri Kam, makes the pork hash as well as the fat nori-wrapped musubi ($3.50) stuffed with her own recipes for char siu and furikake salmon.
The evolving menu reflects the family’s entrepreneurial streak. Chris Kam credits the design of Alicia’s Market logo T-shirts to fiancée Vivian Lin, who’s also the chef behind the li hing gummies and sour lychee ($3.95 and up). Family-owned and -run since Alicia and Raymond Kam opened the shop in 1947, the market’s multiethnic treats also include Puerto Rican pastele and increasingly hard-to-find foods like bacalhau (Portuguese salted cod).
Looking ahead, Kam says to expect more specialty foods, including maybe a smoked roast beef. And good news at any time of year: Almond cookies are about to make a comeback.
267 Mokauea St., (808) 841-1921, aliciasmarket.com, @aliciasmarket
